'Death with dignity' law promoted in Mass.

WORCESTER — To help deal with the loss of a loved one and the empty feelings that it brings, many families try to honor the lives of their loved ones by helping them find peace in their final moments.

James Glickman from Sturbridge didn't get that chance with his father.

The 91-year-old U.S. Army veteran and former Chicagoan and businessman spent the last 45 minutes of his life on the afternoon of July 10, 2010, repeatedly screaming, "I want to die! Help me! Someone help me!" Mr. Glickman said.

The traumatic event played over and over in Mr. Glickman's head, who said he felt helpless to do anything to alleviate his father's suffering, while his hospice nurses at the Jewish Healthcare Center desperately tried to reach the on-call doctor to get his father morphine. By the time the additional medication was in the hands of his nurses, Eugene Glickman had died.

Three weeks prior, his father had made the decision to stop eating and stop taking all his medications, Mr. Glickman said, after surgery to amputate his gangrenous leg at mid-thigh. At that time, his father had already received "excellent" care at JHC for 18 months, Mr. Glickman said, and decided that he had had enough.

"He was highly mentally competent and not depressed, expressing wry regret that Dr. Kevorkian wasn't still making house calls and wondering if we might move to Oregon (where physician-assisted dying is legal)," he said. "It took him three weeks to die."

At 3 in the afternoon his father began to experience painfully labored breathing, he said. The nurses administered morphine and a secretion-drying medication for his lungs, but his condition worsened and they could not give him any more medication without authorization.

"For the next 45 minutes — the last minutes of his life and the longest of my own — he repeatedly screamed, 'I want to die! Help me! Someone help me!' over and over and over," Mr. Glickman said. "The nurses checked in, helpless to do anything. The doctor never called and the hospice supervisor appeared a quarter of an hour after my father was dead."

In December, nearly four years after his father's death, Mr. Glickman testified at the Statehouse in support of the death with dignity bill that would allow mentally competent, terminally ill adults to voluntarily request and receive a prescription medication to hasten their death.

Mr. Glickman said his father would not have had to waste away and refuse his medications day after day if the law was in effect in Massachusetts.

Death with dignity laws that have passed in Montana, Oregon, Washington and Vermont allow people to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose. A similar measure narrowly failed at the ballot in Massachusetts in 2012.

However, the Public Health Committee is now considering the bill. On Feb. 26, the nonprofit Compassion & Choices of Massachusetts that offers support, education and advocacy for choice and care at the end of life, is planning a lobby day at the Statehouse from 9:30 a.m. to noon and is promoting the event on the Facebook page: Compassion & Choices – Massachusetts.

If the Public Health Committee approves the bill in executive session it will move forward to the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

"No one should be forced to suffer as my father did," Mr. Glickman said.

Suzanne Doiron-Schiavone, a social worker at JHC hospice where his father spent his last days, said it is important for people to realize that hospice and physician-assisted dying are not mutually exclusive.

Many of the people who choose the option in states where it is legal are also receiving hospice care, she said. Moreover, only a small percentage of those who do get the prescription actually use it, she said.

The greatest impact of death with dignity laws, she explained, is the peace of mind it provides those who will likely never use it, but who know it is an available option.

Only terminally ill patients over age 18 who are diagnosed with six months or less to live may request to use the law, and typically only as a last resort if each day becomes increasingly unbearable, she said. The primary physician's diagnosis must also be certified by a consulting physician, she said, and the patient must make two requests 15 days apart to use the medication.

However, even if it passes, there are many patients who would not benefit from it as an option, JHC Executive Director Steven Willens said.

Alzheimer's patients, some of whom have been suffering for years, would not be allowed the option, he said, and health care proxies cannot make the decision it for them, even if they repeatedly made their wishes known before their diagnosis.

Additionally, parents cannot exercise the option for their terminally ill children, he said.

Mr. Willens said his own father suffered in his death in 2000. Though he supports death with dignity laws, his father would not have been a candidate for it because he was not considered mentally competent enough to make the choice, he said.

Ann Marie LeBoeuf, director of JHC's hospice program, also watched her 77-year-old father with Alzheimer's suffer through the night when he died four years ago.

Death with dignity proposals have more people thinking about their own mortality, she said.

Though a strong advocate for hospice, Ms. LeBoeuf said if she had to watch another loved one die as her father did, she would be more open to hearing about death with dignity as an option.

Hospice nurses and staff can't predict what it going to happen at the end of someone's life, and getting additional medications when complications arise takes time, she said.

Most people receiving hospice care die comfortably and peacefully, she said, but with others, even the most aggressive pain management measures fail to alleviate their suffering.

"Even the doctors can't legally do anything," she said. "I still think hospice is a good choice. We do the best we can and it is more than nursing. We offer so much and take care of body, mind and spirit."

Contact Paula Owen at powen@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @PaulaOwenTG.